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EDF Health

Every day we are exposed to potentially hazardous chemicals we can’t see —chemicals used in everything from the clothes we wear to the lotions we use and even the couch we sit on. Synthetic chemicals are used to make 96% of products in the United States. Yet scientific research continues to link chemicals in common use to health effects like cancer, infertility, and asthma.

EDF selected 10 individuals across the country to wear a novel wristband technology designed to detect chemicals in their environment for one week – including Gordon, Karen, and Averi.

Gordon is a lieutenant for the Memphis Fire Department. Gordon’s wristband detected 16 chemicals, including gamma-chlordane, a pesticide that has been banned in the U.S. since the 1980s, and 3,4-dichlorophenyl isocyanate, a “chemical intermediate,” which is reportedly used exclusively for chemical manufacturing processes. While there were no fires to fight the week he wore the wristband, Gordon wondered if he came into contact with these chemicals from a site visit to a location that formerly housed chemical stockpiles, his local auto repair shop, the nearby highway – or even his fire suit.

Today marks exactly a month since what is now said to be 10,000 gallons of “crude MCHM” – mixed with what was later found to have included other chemicals – spilled into West Virginia’s Elk River, contaminated 1,700 miles of piping in the water distribution system for nine counties, and disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of the state’s residents.

Despite declining levels of the chemical in the water being fed into the distribution system, late this past week five area schools were closed due to detection of the distinctive licorice-like odor of MCHM and multiple reports of symptoms such as eye irritation, nausea and dizziness among students and staff.

The latest sampling data (for February 7 and 8) at locations such as area fire hydrants and hospitals and at schools shows that MCHM is at non-detect levels (<10 parts per billion) in most samples, but the chemical is still being detected in a minority of the samples despite extensive flushing. Despite repeated calls to do so, officials appear to have yet to conduct any sampling of taps in residents’ homes.

This past week also featured a press conference by state and federal officials seeking to explain their response to the spill (a video of the entire press conference is available in four parts here; it’s worth watching). [UPDATE 3/29/14: As this link no longer works, here are updated links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of the press conference.]

Today’s Charleston Gazette features the latest in a long series of outstanding front-line reports by Ken Ward, Jr., and his colleagues, who have closely followed every twist and turn of both the spill and the government’s response to it. Today’s article makes clear the extent to which federal officials were winging it in the hours and days after the spill was discovered as they rushed to set a “safe” level for MCHM in tap water.

In this post I’ll delve a little deeper into CDC’s rush to set the “safe” level and the many ways in which CDC inadequately accounted for major data gaps and uncertainties. I’ll end by saying what I think CDC should have done instead. Read More »

A hearing held yesterday by the West Virginia Legislature’sJoint Legislative Oversight Commission on State Water Resourcescreated quite a stir, when a witness –West Virginia Environmental Quality Board vice-chairman Scott Simonton – said that the human carcinogen formaldehyde had been detected in several water samples drawn from a Charleston, WV, restaurant, and that people in the area affected by the January 9 spill could be expected to have inhaled the chemical, which he identified as a likely breakdown product of the spilled material, crude MCHM. See stories in the Charleston Gazette and USA Today.

While experts are noting that data are insufficient to identify the spill as the source of any formaldehyde detected in the water samples, this new kerfuffle does point to yet another major data gap on crude MCHM.

The one part-per-million (1 ppm) “safe” level state and federal officials set was based on limited data from studies in which rats were exposed to crude or pure MCHM through oral ingestion. Absolutely no data are available on the chemical with respect to exposure through inhalation. Yet officials did not hesitate to tell residents the 1 ppm level would be safe not only for drinking the water, but also for bathing and showering.

Clearly the material that spilled is volatile – that’s why people can smell it. Taking a hot shower in such water means that people would clearly be exposed via inhalation of the vapor; how much exposure would occur has not been ascertained. But in the absence of any data as to toxicity of the chemical via inhalation, there is simply no scientific basis on which to say or imply that showering in water contaminated at 1 ppm level was OK.

Chemicals can be more or less toxic by inhalation than by ingestion, with one study finding inhalation to be the more toxic route for half of the chemicals examined and oral ingestion to be the more toxic route for the other half. Benzene, for example, is estimated to be several hundred times more toxic by inhalation than by ingestion, while inhalation of chloroform is estimated to be about 25-fold lower in toxicity than it is by ingestion.

What such comparisons indicate is that extrapolating from data on oral toxicity to predict inhalation toxicity – which is effectively what government officials did in this case – is about as accurate as flipping a coin.

[UPDATE 1/28/14: See updates at several places in this post regarding a 2011 Eastman safety data sheet on crude MCHM– which, though more recent than the 2005 version initally circulated, still does not reference the additional oral toxicity studies conducted by Eastman in the 1990s.]

Little more than two weeks after the January 9, 2014, spill of multiple chemicals into West Virginia’s Elk River, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the private and public sectors at all levels failed miserably with regard to protecting the public’s health. There is plenty of blame to go around.

Our focus in the blogging we’ve done about this terrible incident has been and remains on the lack of reliable information available on the chemicals involved in the spill, the failure to promptly share what was available with the public, and the shaky science upon which decisions and public communications as to the critical safety questions were based. In this post, I revisit several aspects of the initial and ongoing information gaps to add some additional perspective.

I discuss in some detail below two major problems that I believe demand close examination in the Chemical Safety Board’s and others’ investigations into the causes and consequences of the spill:

State and federal officials appear to have initially relied on Eastman Chemical Company’s incomplete and out-of-date Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) on “crude MCHM,” and as a result sowed confusion from the outset that has led to widespread public mistrust.

Those same officials appear to have accepted without scrutiny the adequacy, accuracy and relevance of Eastman’s additional toxicity studies of MCHM, based only on summaries of those studies when they were finally provided by Eastman.

I end by briefly describing some of the implications of this tragic incident that need to be addressed going forward.

One caveat: Because information on this incident has emerged in a piecemeal and haphazard manner, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of every detail provided in this post. I have strived to the best of my ability to accurately describe the sequence and nature of events based on the available information. Read More »

Well, this story is rapidly evolving! Even since my last blog post this morning, new information has come to light as to the identity of the “new” chemical that was present in the leaking tank that led to contamination of the drinking water in Charleston, WV.

The Charleston Gazette has now reported that Freedom Industries, the owner of the leaking tank, has told government officials that the “new” chemical is actually a mixture of two chemical products, both of them made by The Dow Chemical Company. One of those is in fact the “DOWANOLTM PPh Glycol Ether” I discussed in my last post. The second is a closely related Dow product called “DOWANOLTM DiPPh Glycol Ether.” (These links are to Dow’s Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) for the two products.)

My earlier post indicated that a Dow contact had told me this morning it does not make a “stripped” version of its PPh product, and hence did not believe it was the supplier of the material to Freedom Industries. As I noted in that post, use of the “stripped” designation to describe the “proprietary” chemical listed in the MSDS supplied yesterday by Freedom Industries for the “new” chemical had suggested the substance had somehow been further distilled.

But the latest article in the Charleston Gazette helps to clarify the situation. It cites State officials indicating that Freedom Industries’ “PPH, stripped” is in fact a mixture of the two Dow products.

Interestingly, the MSDSs for the two Dow products reference a considerably larger amount of toxicity data than does Freedom Industries’ MSDS. It appears, therefore, that there may be more data for officials to go on to assess potential risks associated with this “new” chemical.

Dow’s Technical Data Sheet and Product Safety Assessment for “DOWANOLTM PPh Glycol Ether” list several uses for the product, none of which appear to explain why Freedom Industries would have added the product to the tank of MCHM, which is used to wash coal.

There appear to be some disconnects between Dow’s knowledge of how its own chemicals are being used and by whom, and also between the intended uses of such chemicals and their actual use. These disconnects point to flaws in our current chemical safety policies: chemical manufacturers often don’t have a full picture of how their chemicals are actually used, and downstream users may not have a clear picture of which uses of a chemical are appropriate or not.

The number of lessons to be drawn from this West Virginia chemical spill appears to be growing by the day.

I blogged last nightthat the Charleston Gazette had reported that a “new” chemical that was revealed to have been present in the tank in Charleston, WV, that began leaking into the Elk River on January 9 and contaminated the drinking water supply for 300,000 residents.

Two alert readers recognized the acronym “PPH” and the description of the chemical in Freedom Industries’ Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for “PPH, stripped”, to which I had linked, and suggested the identity of the chemical might be a grade or form of propylene glycol phenyl ether (CAS no. 770-35-4).

I’ve not been able to find further references to or information on “PPH, stripped,” but with the help of those alert readers I have found information on what appears to be a similar but not identical product made by The Dow Chemical Company, under the trade name “DOWANOLTM PPh Glycol Ether” – see Dow’s Technical Data Sheet and its Product Safety Assessment. Among the names Dow lists for its product are both “propylene glycol phenyl ether” and “PPh.”

I’ve compared information available on the Dow and Freedom Industries products. Physical-chemical properties are similar but not identical for the two materials. For example, the boiling point for “PPH, stripped” is 247°C, and for DOWANOLTM it’s 241°C. (This is consistent with the process of “stripping,” by which more volatile components of a mixture are distilled out, which would raise the boiling point of the remaining more concentrated higher molecular weight components of the mixture.) The liquid densities of the two products also match: 1.06 grams per cubic centimeter.

Both products are indicated as being eye and skin irritants, but of low acute oral toxicity.

I contacted Dow this morning, and asked if the Freedom Industries’ “PPH, stripped” material was supplied by Dow or is the same material. My Dow contact answered no to each question. There are quite a few suppliers of this chemical globally.

It thus appears likely that the “new” chemical in the West Virginia spill is a form of propylene glycol phenyl ether. But questions remain as to who made the “stripped” version, who supplied it to Freedom Industries, why its specific chemical identity is being claimed proprietary, and what information beyond that in the company’s MSDS is available regarding its hazard properties.